Category: Booze

Wine reviews, pairings, events, and getaways


May
2017

About Oregon’s Willamette Valley AVA

categories: Wine

The Willamette Valley AVA sits inside the Willamette Valley in Oregon. It spans from the Columbia River in the north to the southern tip of Eugene and from the Oregon coast on the west to the Cascade Mountains in the east. It is the largest, and most popular, of Oregon’s AVAs: it’s 5,200 square miles (150 miles long and about 60 miles wide) and contains over 200 of Oregon’s 700+ wineries. Willamette contains six sub-AVAs: Chehalem Mountains, Dundee Hills, Eola-Amity Hills, McMinnville, Ribbon Ridge and Yamhill-Carlton.

Courtesy of WineryDogs.com

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May
2017

Oregon Wine Week

categories: Wine

I’m traveling north with my wine reviews this week, leaving my home state of California to explore the terrain of Oregon. The history of Oregon wine isn’t unlike our own. The first plantings can be traced back to the pioneer days of the 1840s during the settlement of the “Oregon Territory.” The first official Oregon winery was Valley View, built and run by by Peter Britt in the late 1850s in Jacksonville — a Gold Rush town highly populated with settlers from both American and abroad.

Courtesy of JacksonvilleOregon.com

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May
2017

Day Owl 2016 Rosé of Barbera

categories: Booze, Wine

This epic package arrived at my door. A beautifully emblazoned box holding this radiant rosé. Oh yeah — and two pairs of sunglasses. “Gimmicky?” my partner in wine crime asked, skeptical that the contents of the wine bottle would be no better than the white zin that, in our house, is just called “pink.” “No,” I assured him, “I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.”

Spoiler alert: He was.

Meet Mona. She is a monkey.

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May
2017

Julietta Winery 2015 Chenin Blanc

categories: Booze, Wine

Julietta Winery was a cute little surprise during my last adventure into the tiny Clarksburg AVA of Yolo County. The little shack of a venue seems a mirage amongst the vast fields of farmland. Indeed, outside of the Sugar Mill — which boasts several wineries sharing one crush pad — there seems to be a distinct lack of stand-alone wineries. But, as with most boutique experiences, that just means when you walk in, you’re greeted by Julie and her husband and treated like part of the Clarksburg community — even if you are just passing through.

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May
2017

Cooper Vineyards 2013 Estate Barbera

categories: Booze, Wine

The Cooper family has been farming in Amador County since 1919, when “Grandpa Cooper” left his San Francisco medical practice to tend a walnut orchard. Not until current owner Dick Cooper graduated from UC Davis in the 1970s did the Coopers consider grafting grapevines. But they wanted to think outside the Zinfandel box. Friend Darrell Corti, of Sacramento’s famed Corti Brothers grocery store, gave the Coopers a tip. “Mr. Corti pulled his pocketbook out, retrieved a $1 bill and wrote ‘Barbera’ and ‘Nebbiolo’ on it,” remembers Dick Cooper. With no Nebbiolo to be found, the Coopers turned to neighbor Cary Gott of Montevina Winery, who was willing to sell a bit of Barbera rootstock.

Today, Barbera is Cooper Vineyards’s’ flagship wine, the one that customers flock to the tasting room to buy in bulk.

(Read the full Amador County article on SF Chronicle)

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